Paper short abstract:

The paper will discuss the rise of new forms of artistic practice as exemplified by Alice Yard and Australian artist Hazel Dooney, who sideline the traditional Gallery-Dealer art circuit by using social media and blogging platforms.

Paper long abstract:

Is artistic creativity in the digital, postmodern, dotcom era we live in the same as it was in previous eras? The quotidian, the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday—the popular--all of this is now jostling for space in the art museum, ousting the exotic, the extraordinary, the artistic, or at least cutting it down to size. The optic of the market struggles to regain focus as the intermediary in this global creative commons but has yet to find any purchase. In the breathing space produced by this conjuncture some artists are busy exploiting the myriad of new opportunities for creative expression.

In Trinidad, a group of artists has transformed a humble backyard known as Alice Yard into a creative space where they would perform, display or otherwise showcase their productions. The antithesis of the grand theatre, music hall or national gallery Alice Yard has served as a focal point for real time art happenings whose life is then extended by digital means--blogging, tweeting and facebooking the resulting images, video and texts to wider and wider audiences elsewhere.

This paper will focus on new forms of artistic practice as exemplified by Alice Yard and Australian artist Hazel Dooney's sidelining of the traditional Gallery-Dealer art circuits by using social media and blogging platforms to build and reach her audience. Both are conscious attempts by artists in non-traditional locations to breach the citadel of Art as we know it, by availing the new channels and networks globalization has enabled.